Bilkent Named Best in Tourism Education


Winners of the most prestigious award of the tourism sector in Turkey, known as the "Tourism Oscars," were honored at the Çırağan Palace in İstanbul on Dec. 6 by the International Association of Travel and Tourism Professionals (SKAL). Bilkent took top prize as the best university in the field of tourism education in the ceremony known as SKALİTE 2010.

Awards are given in 27 different categories, and the evaluation of the organizations and people took weeks to come to the final stage. In the first round, over 79,000 people voted for the tourism establishments that best represent quality in service in their areas. Those with the most votes reached the second round, which was  the final stage for voting. Nearly 1000 SKAL members were asked for their votes for the finalists.

Graduates from Bilkent University School of Tourism and Hotel Management and school administrators were present to see Bilkent honored.

Email Outage Scheduled for December 19

BCC will be deploying a new set of e-mail servers for e-mail accounts of the form xyz@bilkent.edu.tr. The new servers will be activated on Sunday December 19. Transfer of the existing mail boxes to the new system will start at 1 a.m. that day and will be completed around 3 p.m. on the same afternoon.

E-mail services (both incoming and outgoing) for the @bilkent.edu.tr group of accounts will not be available during this transition. All incoming e-mail will be captured by a temporary server and stored at BCC; therefore no incoming e-mails will be lost.

Subdomain accounts like @fen.bilkent.edu.tr, @ctp.bilkent.edu.tr, @cs.bilkent.edu.tr, @ee.bilkent.edu.tr, etc. will not be affected and will not be disrupted.

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Library Launches New Service: Ask Online!

The Library would like to announce the start of a new service called Ask Online! This service is an embedded instant messaging program that will allow users to contact one of our reference librarians in real time and pose questions online about research problems or library services without having to visit the Library. As long as a librarian is logged on, you will be able to "chat" about your query and receive a response much more quickly than walking to the library building or waiting for an email reply. This new service will be available between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. To access Ask Online!, follow the links on our homepage: http://library.bilkent.edu.tr/. There is no need for users to register or login; your chat will be displayed simply as a "guest.

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UNICEF Volunteers Hold Fund Raising Fair

The UNICEF Volunteers Committee held a fund raising fair to support ongoing relief efforts of UNICEF. The fair, held in dormitory 70 between December 8 and 10, raised money for children who live in urgent need of aid.

Volunteers sold donations of lightly used and new clothing, electrical appliances, and decorative items. They prepared various items of their own, from cookies, honey, jam, and cakes to jewelry, magazines, and books to sell at the fair. The large amount of interest in the event proved very encouraging for the organizers. All proceeds went to the UNICEF children's fund.